An independent blog looking at things from a classically liberal perspective. We are independent of any group or organization, and only speak for ourselves, and intend to keep it that way.

Thursday, March 19, 2009

It's for the children.

In my previous post I mentioned the old bait-and-switch tactics of politicians where they scare the people with one horror story and use that to justify actions totally unrelated to the original fear. Here is another good example of this dishonest tactic.

Australia announced that they were going to have nation-wide Internet censorship to help control child porn. That’s a smart move. Use the child porn fear to scare people and then move on with the true agenda. Now it appears that the blacklist of banned websites has been leaked prior to the ban going into effect. And guess what? Most of the banned sites have nothing to do with child porn. Anyone surprised?

A document that was recently leaked showed that various sites are being banned including poker sites, some YouTube links, regular erotica sites, sites about euthanasia, fringe religious groups, some Christian sites, a tour operator and, for some reason, a Queensland dentist.

The Australian government, anxious to catch up with the police state mentality of Mother England, intends to make Internet filtering mandatory for the entire country and has said they intend to ban access to 10,000 different websites. In fact, Wikileaks was added to the banned list because it told people which sites were banned. As the Australian government sees it, the list of banned sites is itself banned material. People must not be allowed to know what they aren’t allowed to know. Anyone informing the Australian public of what is banned can go to jail for ten years.

Because the list of banned sites is itself banned it is not possible for someone to know they are on the list. Sites put on the list are not told they have been banned, nor do they have any recourse to appeal the banning. One two-bit politician said, “No one interested in cyber safety would condone the leaking of the list.” Apparently, to oppose what amounts to a secret court, capable of banning a website, without any charges being brought, or any defense or appeal being allowed, promotes cyber safety.

Most of the time, when politicians claim they want to “protect the children” you should hide your wallet and the Bill of Rights. Their real attend is to plunder the one and rape the other.